How to make Thai Turkey and Zucchini meatballs and tips for cauliflower rice success! Via Chef Kirsten Helle, personal chef to professional athletes, who lost over 100 pounds setting out to create a healthy new family legacy.

Thai Turkey-Zucchini Meatballs & My Trick For Great Cauliflower Rice

It would be a full time job to write up the recipes for every single thing I cook on a daily basis. Between cooking for sometimes two clients a day, on top of the meals I create for my family, (who are often guinea pigs for recipes I’m testing out for clients) so although I am constantly creating new recipes, unfortunately I’m not able to write them all up.

I do however post a lot of the meals I cook for my clients and family dinners over on my social media channels. I hope it inspires others and gives you a glimpse of my day. People often ask me what I eat on a daily basis to have lost over 100 pounds and keep it off, while pursuing my mission to bring more life to the family table (not just poached chicken and broccoli), so I share this there also.

As for my client’s meals, I cook for professional athletes who are either cutting or gaining weight, clients following a Paleo plan due to a diagnosis of Celiac disease or a trainer’s recommendation, vegans, vegetarians, elimination diets, kidney health diets, blood type diets….You name the diet/lifestyle, I’ve likely cooked it!

I posted this recipe, which I created for a client with Celiac disease. She loves bold flavors from all over the world (which I’m known for thankfully!) so I came up with these tasty little meatballs. I shared the photo and I got a big response asking for the recipe, so here you go!

The meatballs are great served over rice, rice noodles, in a Banh-mi-style sandwich, however you like, but for this client we go for a favorite of theirs, cauliflower rice. I’ve been making cauliflower rice for years, having started out 9 years ago with one of my first clients being those on elimination diets. I hear people complain about it often so I thought I’d share my tips for delicious cauliflower rice success below.

I hope you enjoy!

**How good would these be for an appetizer on a skewer with peanut sauce?**

Tips for cauliflower rice success:

Use a large cutting board to cut the cauliflower into small florets and the stems into very small pieces. From here you can put it into a food processor (don’t skip this step if you’re using a food processor – if you do you’ll likely end up with some pieces of mush, others too big), or continue chopping over and over with a knife until you have a rice-like consistency. **Huge shout out to my assistant Jill for ever-so-patiently chopping hundreds, perhaps thousands, of heads of cauliflower into rice.**

Preheat a large wok or skillet over high heat. When it is hot add oil of your choice. I usually say “healthy oil/fat of your choice” for my recipes because it is a personal choice what you use, but in this case definitely go for either coconut oil or avocado oil, other oils get damaged over high heat. Swirl around the pan.

Add the finely chopped cauliflower. Stirring often, cook just until the rawness is gone. One of the biggest complaints I hear: mushy, stinky cauliflower rice. These pieces of cauliflower are TINY and don’t need much cooking. You want them just al dente.

Remove from the heat. At this point you can add some flavoring with a pinch of salt, pepper, or what I often do is hit it with a spritz of lime and fresh chopped cilantro. Why not add the salt when we’re cooking the cauliflower rice? Because we don’t want to draw out any excess moisture, another complaint I hear about cauliflower rice.

Making “fried” rice? Cook all of your other ingredients first (diced ham/bbq pork, nitrate-free bacon, scallions, peas and carrots, egg, Tamari soy, etc.) then add the cauliflower rice in at the very end of cooking.